The Morning After: Wednesday, December 13th 2017

The Daily Grind: MMOs jumping the shark?

There are many who may argue that some MMOs have already jumped the shark. Two of the examples that came up in our recent debates were EverQuest and of course, Star Wars Galaxies. SWG is perhaps the most obvious one for any potential shark-jumping with their decision to switch to the NGE, and thus completely dropping a new game into players' laps. The idea was to bring more people into SWG, but so far as we've been able to tell, it's still fairly low-population whenever we've logged in. Of course, the unintended consequence also involved many of the original players leaving the game, torching the game box, who have since then taken every possible chance to curse the names of all involved with the NGE. The line in EverQuest is blurry; some say it was Kunark, some say it was Planes of Power, and still others say that it hasn't really ever jumped since there's still a devoted fanbase.

Today we'd like to ask you -- do you think that it's possible for an MMO to ever actually "jump the shark?" Would you consider SWG to be alone in that distinction (assuming it applies) like some of the people we spoke to? Do you think that there are far more games that have passed the point of no return than what we've listed? What point do you think is too far? And do you see any games giving off warning bells that they are nearing the danger point?